A Place Called Wiregrass (16 page)

“Now, you know we just appreciate you to pieces,” she said, patting my hand the same way she would’ve patted the heads of third graders in the lunchroom line. “We just have different roles.” She looked at her watch. “Oh me, I know you’re worn slam out. And I need to go check on Mama.”

In the hallway, Patricia reached over and lightly kissed the top of my ear. I wondered if she was trying to do one of those haughty air kisses and missed. “Now, you go home, draw you a nice hot bath with lots of bubbles, and just
relax.
”

But I did not relax as Patricia ordered in her fakey voice. I picked Cher up at the house and headed straight for the library. “I don’t want Miss Claudia to die,” Cher sheepishly said in the car.

She needs rocks, not mud,
I reminded myself. “I don’t neither. That’s why we’re gonna fight this thing. And we’re gonna make Miss Claudia fight too.”

Cher was amazing on the Internet. She whizzed around that thing like she was driving a Corvette through an obstacle course. Before I knew it, she was making that computer screen come up with doctors’ names from Montgomery to Seattle, all specialists on leukemia. I watched her from a distant table and twirled the key chain on my index finger. The foreign environment with its cases of musky-smelling books and humming
computers made me feel as though a spotlight was on me and any minute a college professor-type fellow would come out from behind a shelf and say, “Go away. You don’t belong here.”

“While Cher’s on the computer, why don’t we pull some books,” Mrs. MacIntyre said behind me. I followed her blouse of yellow hummingbirds and couldn’t help but feel proud that the librarian knew Cher’s name. When I was going to school that was always a sign of a real smart girl, a good girl. All the same, for the sake of privacy I warned Cher not to tell the librarian Miss Claudia was the patient. “My great-grandmother’s got leukemia,” Cher told a frowning Mrs. MacIntyre.

The days that followed were a bonding experience for Cher and me. Every day after school, she would come home with a new printout from MedLine or some other Internet page describing the latest in leukemia research and treatment. Mostly the words seemed to run together in some mixed-up language. But since I always made good marks in science, I found it all interesting whether I knew what it meant or not.

Instead of battling over LaRue or Cher’s self-appointed new last name, we spent our evenings reviewing papers and books with coded graphs and illustrations. Lymph nodes, immuno-suppressive therapy, T-cells, and blasts were road signs for our mission. Chronic myelogenous leukemia, according to a heavy book with a black cover, was not a fast killer. “Sometimes people live for five, even maybe ten years after they get it,” Cher read. She leaned over the book with her hands stuffed inside the back pockets of her cut-off jeans. I knew by the way her wild brown eyes gazed up at me she was seeking reassurance. I held the fat book and ran my finger under the words that streamed together like Chinese. “How ’bout that,” I said and handed the book back to her.

But it was the part in the book on blasts that worried me. The section I hoped Cher had overlooked. Later when Cher was asleep, I sat at the dinette table, and the low-hanging light
cast shadows on the cell charts. My finger slowly crept along the pages and delivered me to a destination of worry.
Blasts, the point in leukemia when the white blood cells take over the bone marrow and prevent the marrow from making enough of the cells and platelets. The blasts overwhelm the system: the white cells needed to fight infection, the red cells that carry oxygen, and the platelets that help blood clot.

My eyes locked on the words that predicted the blasts would take over Miss Claudia’s organs and glands. I looked into the darkness beyond my kitchen window and saw the orange outline of Kasi’s truck across the street. Under the hum of the lightbulb, I added blasts to my mental list of enemies, right under LaRue and Bozo.

“I just need my rest,” Miss Claudia said the second day home from the hospital. I closed the bedroom door and stood still, listening to her breathe and feeling helpless. Her sinking spell, as she called the hospital episode, put my butt in gear. While most of the stuff Cher lugged home from the library was over my head, I did find something I could make sense out of—good groceries. Cher checked out a book on nutrition for leukemia patients, and soon I found myself in Winn-Dixie squabbling with the produce manager over the spinach. The acne-scarred man never understood why the nutrition book said spinach had to be a bright green, not a dull color.

Driving to Gerald’s one Saturday afternoon, I stopped by a vegetable stand that an old man ran at the edge of his farm and bought a mess of squash and a watermelon. But my feasts were only successful in spoiling Richard. “I want you to get some more squash. That was the freshest mess of squash,” Richard said, getting up from the table with his half-tucked napkin sliding down the front of his pants. I ignored his request and studied the dark yellow squash and chips of cooked
onion, which had been creatively moved around on the plate Miss Claudia left outside her bedroom door. Nothing I did made her eat or even crack a remark. Her only communication with me was an occasional, “When you get a minute, could I have some more tea?” And when I knocked on her door with a crystal pitcher of sweet tea and a glass of ice, she’d faintly say, “Just leave it by the door. I’ll get it directly.”

“She just ain’t acting right,” I told Gerald.

At first I thought he was ignoring me when I saw him cast his spinning rod in the center of the murky pond. He had called me early that Saturday with an invitation to go to the weed-infested spot known to Wiregrass natives as “Kingfish Hole.”

“Well, she just probably don’t want you feeling sorry for her,” Gerald said, reeling his shiny silver rod.

“I just don’t understand why she won’t take treatment. I keep putting papers that Cher finds on that computer under her door. You know, about new medicine and stuff,” I said, looking down at the knee-high weeds around me.

“Dog,” he yelled and quickly reeled in his limp line. “That was a big ’un.” The light thud of the line weight hitting water made a ripple across the black surface. “She’s lived a good life. She knows where she’s going.”

I put my hand on my jeans and held the grooved cane pole with my other hand. “Yeah. She’s gonna die is where she’s headed. I can’t believe…”

He stopped reeling his line for a second and looked at me. His mouth was partly open, and the brim of his blue Ford cap cast a shadow over his eyes. Even his mouth was good-looking. The tickle of his mustache was still fresh in my mind. I looked quickly away at my bobbing red-and-white cork. Nibbling. That’s all I ever get.

“No, she knows she’s going to heaven,” he said as matter-of-fact as if he had been giving me the time.

I glanced at him, but he was mumbling something undetectable and reeling his line back to shore. “Dadgum it,” he said and stomped his foot.

His ways and tongue were foreign to me.
How could he be so confident in thinking he knew everything about Miss Claudia? Most likely he thought the same of his first wife. That she was safe and secure in a land of peace. Probably why he doesn’t drown himself in drink.

The second time he stomped his foot in protest, I let go of figuring him out and laughed.

“Hey, hey,” he said, pointing at the spot where my cork had disappeared under the water’s surface. The pole bent forward, and the weight at the end made me think that the pole would surely break in half. The slick pole pulsated in my hand, and I leaned towards the lake. My mind told me to give up and realize whatever had snatched onto my line would get away. Gerald stood behind me and gripped the pole. His hands were warm and rough on top of mine.

“No, let loose. I want to do it myself,” I yelled. I grunted and moaned, pulling the heavy pole upward and towards the pond’s bank. Before I knew it, the water was splashing around the edge of the lily pads. “No,” I screamed when my wrists began to burn. I gritted my teeth and lifted the heavy pole over my shoulder.

Gerald held the big-eyed bass by the corners of its mouth. “I bet you he’s a six-pounder.”

Driving home in Gerald’s truck with my prize secured in the orange cooler, I removed the rubber band and let my hair take off in a fury. Wind swept through the open windows and lifted the ends of my hair on a wild ride. “Well, ain’t you something,” Gerald said and brushed the corner of his mustache.

Each breath from the hard-hitting wind filled me with energy. There had been too many times in my life when I had wasted time thinking about opportunities that nibbled but never bit. I concentrated on all the good things that were happening in my life—my new life. And Miss Claudia was at the top of the list. She would not nibble and retreat. She would stay with me, I would catch her completely. I was determined more than ever to get her out of her box, the one she crafted behind the mahogany door on Elm Drive.

“N
ow, this is her ulcer medicine,” Patricia said, holding up the prescription bottle in Miss Claudia’s living room like she was doing a Mary Kay sales pitch. “And these are her blood pills,” she said. Patricia held the bottle at arm’s length and read the label. She nodded and placed the bottle with the others on the silver platter. “Now Erma Lee, I only want you handling the medicine.”

I nodded and sighed softly. The house on Elm Drive had been under Patricia’s rule ever since Miss Claudia went into hibernation. Every time she called from school wanting to know an update, I felt like hanging up on her. But then I would remind myself that the strangeness in the home would pass and soon Miss Claudia would be back to her old self.

“Now, I don’t want Richard touching these bottles,” Patricia said with her hand cupped to her mouth. “Last time when Mama was having ulcer problems, he gave her a hormone pill.” The red lips parted, and her eyes rolled up to the penciled eyebrows.

The rows of orange bottles reminded me of Miss Claudia’s age and condition.
Blasts,
I thought and quickly pushed the negative thinking out of my mind, choosing instead to think of the prized catfish. Even at eighty, Miss Claudia was “so happening,” as Cher described her best. Only I hated that silver tray lined with prescription bottles.

“She’s just down in the dumps,” Patricia would whisper and pull the bedroom door behind her. Usually I stood in the hallway, leaning slightly to try to catch a glimpse of Miss Claudia before the heavy door slammed shut. I only managed a peek of her burgundy wingback chair. So often I wanted to knock Patricia out of the way and walk right in. If I could, I’d tell Miss Claudia something cute I heard one of the kids say in the lunchroom line. She always liked their young outlooks on life and often would repeat their comments days afterward.

After two weeks, I began to worry that the stuff I shared with Miss Claudia about Cher’s troubled start in life and the lies I told her about Suzette and her not being in prison had damaged our relationship. The tension was only made stronger by Patricia. She would shake her puffed-out hair and stick her lips out like a pouting child. “Not today,” she would say each time I asked if I could see Miss Claudia. “She’s asked for privacy.” My lip was slit from the steady clamping of my teeth.

I am only hired help,
I would remind myself and then ball the dish towel, throwing it as hard as I could into the sink.

The creaks and pops of the trailer siding would echo while I laid still in bed trying to get inside Miss Claudia’s mind. She had refused treatment for her leukemia, she was not eating hardly anything, and now she had gone against her very nature and become a hermit.

Her good-looking pastor with wavy black hair was not even invited in to see her. The poor man had no clue what was really running through Miss Claudia’s blood. “Just simple anemia,” Patricia told him when he asked about her mama’s condition. One day after I had been staring at the pastor’s shiny white teeth, I found myself calling out to Miss Claudia’s God. “Show her some mercy,” I said, as if a friend had been standing at her doorway. “You’re the only one who can get behind that heavy door and pull her out of this.”

Gerald was patient while I worked on strategies to reach Miss Claudia. And every time the latest plan failed, he would silently listen to my discouraging words on the other end of the phone. If Marcie was at his house fixing his supper or washing his clothes, she always answered the phone. I would promptly hang up before she could get the word
hello
out of her mouth. I could only worry about so many things at one time, and whether his prissy daughter really did or did not like me was one thing I couldn’t take at that time.

Along with steak supper on Friday and Saturday nights, the Houston County horse show arena became another tradition for Gerald and me. As vice-president of the Rough Riders Horseman’s Association, Gerald made sure the sand arena was tilled and all the bulbs in the stadium lights worked properly. Two Saturday nights a month, the arena was set up for pole-bending and barrel-racing competition. Cher would even skip skating and join us. I like how it felt having her seated in the truck between Gerald and me as we pulled into the arena’s gravel driveway.

While me and Gerald sat above the arena in the stadium seats, cheering Donnie on during the barrel races, Cher walked alongside the horse trailers. She would talk to the owners and admire the horses tied to the side of the trailers. The trailers were directly opposite the stadium seats, and if she disappeared for more than thirty minutes, I’d stand up until I spotted her over the trailer tops. “You’re as bad as an old mother hen,” Gerald would tease me.

For acting so low-key the rest of the time, Donnie sure got worked into a frenzy during the pole-bending event. He’d stick his skinny butt up in the saddle and lean over his horse, guiding the animal around each pole. “Yip yip yip yip,” he’d
yell when circling the last one. I guessed that yelling explained why he had the logo airbrushed on the side of his trailer.

After every event, we would walk around the arena to the red horse trailer with a black Tasmanian devil painted on the side. The word
Donnie
was stenciled above the wild figure. Each Saturday evening Donnie would circle around us carrying a fresh horse blanket and getting ready for the next event. Cher took her usual place at the head of Paintbrush and was pulling his mane out from under the halter strap.

“You made good time out yonder,” Gerald said, never noticing Cher feeding the horse a carrot stick she had hidden in her overall pocket. Donnie was busy putting the fresh blanket on Paintbrush’s back when he saw Cher. “Are you stupid?” He snatched the carrot from Cher’s hand and tossed it to the ground. “He’ll colic if you feed him when he’s hot,” Donnie yelled. The horse raised his ears and lifted his brown head, still chewing the few bits of his forbidden treat.

Cher took two steps backwards and rubbed the sweetness of the carrot on her overalls. “Sorry. I just…”

My tongue was weary from being bitten at Miss Claudia’s, and I was not about to bite it someplace I was not getting paid for. I moved closer to Cher.

“Ain’t no need to get your panties in a wad,” Gerald stepped forward and clamped his wide palm on Donnie’s bony shoulder. “She’s just learning about horses. Ain’t you, Cher?”

I saw Gerald’s fingers squeeze in around the skin that protected Donnie’s shoulder blade. Donnie gasped and managed to spit out, “Sorry,” before Gerald released the bone.

Gerald hadn’t yet turned on his blinker to the Westgate Trailer Park entrance when he turned to look at me. “How about y’all come go to church with me in the morning?”

I could feel Cher’s brown eyes fixated on me, wondering what my response would be. My foot nervously tapped on the
floorboard. A man like Gerald, with his own prayer chain, probably thought all good women went to church. His first wife even went to Wednesday night prayer meetings too. I looked over at Cher.

“That sounds real nice.” Cher wrinkled her brow and cut her eyes away. By my sweet tone Gerald must’ve thought I was the best peanut-brittle maker on Homecoming Sunday.

Nestled among a dozen oak trees and a patch of pines, Wiregrass Community Church looked inviting with its whitewashed block structure and small gold cross on the steeple. “The moss on those trees looks like earrings hanging down,” Cher said when we climbed out of Gerald’s truck. I had no time to notice such decorations. I was too busy pulling at my trusty white dress with big black flowers. All I needed was my slip hanging out the first time I met Gerald’s church members.

“Feller, how in the world are you?” asked a little man with red whisks of hair on his freckled head.

“A. J. Ferguson,” Gerald introduced the man while we stood on the green indoor-outdoor carpeted church steps. Three other men stood off to the side, puffing on their between-Sunday-school-and-church cigarettes.

A robust woman with loose brown curls stepped from behind two white doors. Behind her I could hear the faint strains of piano music. She was at least sixty, and I thought it kinda funny how her long curls bounced and her dark eyes sparkled. Her head looked like somebody had cut out a picture of Shirley Temple and pasted it on a worn-out, lumpy body. “Oh, we got visitors,” she said and handed me a bulletin. Gerald introduced her as Brownie, A.J.’s wife.

Before Gerald could introduce Cher, I seized the opportunity. “And this is my granddaughter, Cher Jacobs.” I accented
Jacobs
the way a cheerleader would the word
touchdown
at a football game. The church house offered the perfect opportunity to remind Cher that she was truly a Jacobs by law and the last name LaRouche was filthy.

Later over a plate of Colonel Sander’s original recipe I would learn Brownie’s real name was Gladys. But ever since she was a kid, people called her Brownie on account of how bright her brown hair was. An identification marker that I imagined required a regular supply of Miss Clairol. Gerald knew all these details from his parents, charter members of the church, who now slept alongside Leslie in the cemetery behind the white-steeple church. I was grateful I couldn’t eye the gray and white tombstones from the church parking lot and never strained my neck too far for fear of catching a glimpse of Gerald’s first wife’s resting place.

Lee Avery couldn’t have been more than thirty. Certainly he was younger than any preacher I’d ever had contact with. Then again, other than the occasional funeral or wedding, that was not often. He stood in the church aisle next to Gerald’s self-assigned fourth pew. The young man made me feel sorry for him by the way he nervously juggled his big black Bible from one hand to the other. Gerald introduced us, and I tried to smile real big at him, hoping to give him a little encouragement.

Lee had a pasty-colored face and a pointy nose that reminded me of a hawk’s beak. He was nothing compared to that good-looking man of God who visited Miss Claudia. What remaining black hair Lee had on the top of his head spread out in thin pieces to form the shape of a black spider.

I sat there that Sunday morning speaking to the members of the congregation who wanted to meet Gerald’s lady friend, as one old man called me, and I thought of Aunt Stella. She would’ve liked this church. But then again I guess Aunt Stella liked any church. Not even Mama was surprised when her
older sister called that summer day and invited me to Vacation Bible School. Daddy had just left town for good, and if it hadn’t been for the nursery that cared for my younger siblings, I could not have gone.

“All that church does is build up air castles,” Mama said while I cleaned out her black lunch pail. “You gonna go there and get religion and then walk right out the door and get bit by the real world. You best learn to depend on yourself.”

But as usual, I ignored Mama. Every morning that July week of Bible School, after Mama left for work, I’d get my brothers and sisters cleaned and dressed. “Y’all smell so nice and clean,” Aunt Stella would say as I directed the fruits of my works into the white station wagon with the missing hubcap. During the drive to church, I liked to count how many times Aunt Stella would say things that were opposite to Mama’s sour ways. How she would giggle at my youngest brother’s questions in contrast to Mama’s snappy responses. Or how on the ride home when my sister Lurleen would spill some of the Kool-Aid dispensed by the church ladies, Aunt Stella would casually reach back and hand me an ever ready napkin to dry up the red liquid. If Mama would’ve had a car that nice, she would’ve put a knot on Lurleen’s head and one on mine too for letting the accident happen.

But Mama was not there in that hot, sticky car. The white station wagon was our oasis. While we sweated against the black plastic car seat and memorized Bible verses, Mama sweated over an industrial-strength Singer sewing machine. Years later when I went to work alongside Mama at the Haggar factory, I came to terms with why she was so jealous of Aunt Stella. Having a husband killed in Korea and no children were only minor inconveniences compared to raising seven children after a husband goes AWOL from his family duties.

The steps leading up the pulpit at Wiregrass Community Church were fancier than the steps in Aunt Stella’s church.
Her church steps were simple wooden ones. I know because I felt the stickiness of fresh varnish on them when I rested my elbows on them and joined the church.

All I knew that day was Brenda Singleton said her mama told her before she left home that she wanted Brenda to join the church the last day of Vacation Bible School. My mama had only opened her black lunch pail that morning and asked, “Is this tuna or chicken salad?” before heading out the torn screen door.

Brenda had long slipped away from me and was in the embrace of the flat-nosed preacher. He kept dabbing his red forehead and nodding for Brenda’s mother to play another stanza of “Just As I Am” on the piano while more kids migrated towards the steps. During the second repeat of the third verse I looked around in horror to find myself with my brothers and sisters and other children too young to make such decisions. The only other kid my age left in a pew was Bubba McAllister, the biggest and most hateful boy in school. The next thing I remember, I was face down on the sticky varnished steps leading up to the pulpit, joining Antioch Missionary Church.

“I’m just tickled pink,” Aunt Stella said and nuzzled me into the softness of her bosom and underarm. “Your mama’s next. Change is a-coming.”

I’m just grateful that Aunt Stella thought gambling was a sin and never put any money on her prediction. Mama moaned and bellyached about going to my baptism two Sundays later. But after I had washed and dressed all the kids, she ran out of excuses. Little did she know her bickering only reinforced what Aunt Stella had told me about the devil having Mama by the tail. My brothers and sisters sat patiently in a line on the couch arms and cushions. I promised them all a candy bar if they acted nice. “I got no time to take part in your foolishness, girl,” Mama yelled from the bathroom. I
could hear the whips of the brush running through her coarse-cropped hair.